Bizarre and Curious Moments in the Life of a Food Critic

In my 15 years of reviewing restaurants I’ve seen some fairly unusual things: actually far more than I can document. But here are some of my favorites.

Got Milk?

Several years ago at one of our higher end restaurants a commotion occurred when one of the female patrons with an infant in tow began to very discreetly breast feed her hungry baby. The woman was seated at a small table with her husband at the rear of the restaurant. Several older women customers had hissy fits and demanded to see the owner. We were seated next to one of the irate diners when I gently suggested to her that she let things pass.

Her response was: “so what are you, one those La Leche people?”

I said: “No, I’m a food critic!”

She sneered: “So they have those too?”

It was one of the most inane retorts I have ever heard, anywhere. And the breast feeding mom finished her feeding during my exchange with the diner from Hell and went back to her Foie Gras.

Leave it to Rob

Another night a fine dining restaurant with an excellent wine list. A guy several tables away ordered a Caymus Special Selection ’03. Seconds later I began to wonder why he did.

His server opened the bottle and made a minor error by allowing a few minuscule pieces of cork to fall into the customers glass. Several seconds later as he was “swirling” the wine he noticed the tiny pieces of cork.

“This wine is corked,” he said loudly.

The server was appalled and after a quick sniff assured the customer that all was well. The owner came out and assured the patron that all was OK.

But the boisterous gent was still not satisfied. Then, he noticed me several tables away.

“Let Rob Balon decide. I’ll honor his opinion.”

The owner approached me (we had not met) and asked if I would mind giving my appraisal. This poor guy stood to lose about a $300 bottle of wine which would have negatively impacted his night.

Reluctantly, I agreed. The wine was brought over and after one sniff and a quick sip I said definitively “this wine is delicious. Might need to breathe a bit but that’s all.”

The owner breathed a huge sigh and smiled. The wine expert who had nominated me to be the judge should his head ruefully, “Well Okay then. If Balon says it’s not corked, so be it.”

Later I explained to him that the few crumbs of cork in his glass meant nothing. When a wine is corked the wine and the cork take on an unmistakably moldy odor. The fact that this happens with an unfortunate degree of regularity is one reason why the wine industry is slowly moving toward synthetic corks or even screw-off caps.

Did the pompous wine expert learn something that night? Probably not but I did gain a new friend in the owner of the restaurant.

The Tale of the Staple

I was with my family at a local steakhouse one night and ordered a bone-in ribeye (medium rare +). When the stake arrived I took a big bite and immediately felt a piercing pain in my tongue. I was even more horrified when my tongue began to bleed. I reached into my mouth and made contact with some metallic object. I pulled on it and astonishingly, out came a large staple. By this point the entire table was freaking out and I was dipping my napkin into the ice water and attempting to stem the bleeding.

As I managed to slow down the blood loss, a youngish manager approached the table. “Is there a problem?”

Not yet able top speak coherently, I showed him the bloody staple that I had extracted from my tongue. “Oh dear,” he said. “Can I get you a bandage?”

“A bandage for my tongue?”, I mumbled.

“Well let me see if we have something else,” he said. That was indeed reassuring.

He left the table and was gone for at least 20 minutes. When he returned the bleeding had stopped and I had gone through all the napkins a waiter had brought for me. The table was a mess and my steak had drops of my own blood on it. My kids were mortified.

“I couldn’t find a bandage” he said.

I shook my head. “I think we just want to leave.”

“Well I’m terribly sorry,” the junior G man said.

“Me too,” I said.

“Well let me get you something,” he said. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

Thinking he would return with a gift card, we were astonished when he presented us with a bill. And my bloody ribeye was still on it!
Stupefied, I said, “Are you kidding? You’re bringing us a bill?”

He seemed perplexed. “I don’t have the authority to comp your bill. But i can offer you a free dessert.”

I stood up and at this point the pain in my tongue flared anew. “Look, we are leaving. You can take this check and throw it into the fireplace over there because I’m not paying it.”

The young manager actually said, “Sir, I’ll have to alert the police.”

“Fine I said. I’ll even give you me cell phone number and i can forward them the pictures I took of the staple, the bloody napkins, and all the blood that dripped on my steak.”

At that he appeared to go mute. We got up, left, and walked out the door.

A quick stop at minor emergency revealed a nasty hole in my tongue that required a doctor’s attention. We made a point to send the bill to the junior G man at the restaurant.

Never heard from the police or, even more distressingly, from the owner.

The place closed about six months later. And lest you suggest I may have been the cause of that, I never mentioned it on our site or on my radio program.

As Forrest Gump’s esteemed mama used to say, “Stupid is as stupid does.” I rest my case